I must congratulate the Tánaiste and the Government on the budget presentation which was a masterpiece in spin and public relations. However, reality is dawning more quickly than could have been foreseen. For example, people are reading today about the nefarious consequences of the cap on tax relief for those with private health insurance. Premiums will increase immediately. This is happening at a time when thousands of people are leaving the system every month and will be at the expense of the already overburdened public health system. The decision to snatch back 135,000 medical cards from people who need them is also getting attention.

In his programme for Government the Tánaiste stated he would maintain social welfare rates. However, in the past three budgets substantial cuts have taken place, including to child benefit, maternity benefit, the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and the respite care grant. The redundancy rebate has been abolished; the household benefits package has been slashed, while the supplementary welfare budget has been reduced substantially. In this budget a measure has been introduced to pauperise the young unemployed. Is this not a cut to the core social welfare rate? One of the Tánaiste's colleagues stated the object of this change was to stop the young from watching flat screen television seven days a week. However, just before its website crashed, Labour Youth described this decision as "regressive, counter productive and fundamentally unjust". With whom does the Tánaiste agree? Does he agree with his colleague who says it is to stop people watching flat screen television seven days a week or with the youth wing of his party which describes this change as regressive, counter productive and fundamentally unjust? It is not a cut to the core rate of jobseeker's allowance?

This budget takes us out of the bailout programme. When we think back to where we started from and the worries people had about whether the State would be able to continue making social welfare payments and the extent to which it would continue to be able to make old age payments, pay secondary benefits and so on, being able to get out of the bailout programme without cutting basic social welfare rates or the old age pension and while maintaining most of the benefits available to pensioners and people on social welfare is quite an achievement. When people look at the budget, the question that must be asked is not whether this cut or change should have been made. The choice is between what we have done and what Fianna Fáil would have done. The four year plan published by Fianna Fáil prior to the last general election included a figure of €17.9 billion for social spending in 2014. The Government will spend €19.6 billion on social protection measures next year. In other words, if Fianna Fáil was still in power, some €1.7 billion extra would be removed from the social protection budget. I have a question for Deputy Willie O'Dea who is his party's spokesperson on social protection. What measures would he take and what additional cuts would he make in the Social Welfare Bill to get the extra €1.7 billion? If we look, for example, at what we have done in the budget, €1.7 billion would represent approximately eight times the total of the various changes made in this year's budget. Therefore, it is not for Fianna Fáil to get up and raise this or that issue, but to tell the people what additional measures it would take. What additional cuts would it make to pension, social welfare protection and various secondary benefits to reach the figure of €1.7 billion extra in cuts that it stated it would implement in 2014?

The Labour Party is getting excited. To answer the question, I will provide the Tánaiste with a copy of our budget proposals as an alternative to his.

Fiction.

They involve taxing the wealthy, making the wealthy pay more and the poor less. That is what they are about and precisely what the Labour Party should be doing. What the last Government would, should or might have done is history. In the last general election the people gave their verdict on the Government of the day and entrusted the Labour Party and Fine Gael with governance of the country.

Based on their promises.

On behalf of the people who are watching these proceedings and none too impressed with the Tánaiste's aggressive, bullying and hectoring response to any question -----

Will the Deputy, please, put his question?

What cuts in social services would the Deputy make to reach the figure of €1.7 billion?

I have three simple questions. First, does the Tánaiste agree -----

Stay quiet please.

Does the Tánaiste agree the extension-----

Put him out.

I do not need help from Deputy McGrath either.

-----of a lesser rate to young people is a cut? The extension of a lower rate to more people is a cut and those affected by this extension of the lower rate will suffer.

Does the Tánaiste agree that since the Government took office, contrary to the commitments made, there has been a substantial reduction in provision for the elderly through the slashing of the household benefits package-----

Not nearly as much as Fianna Fáil intended to make.

-----and for carers, the vulnerable and the unemployed?

Will the Tánaiste give the House a categoric assurance the cut of €5 million in the subvention to RTE with regard to those who receive free television licences will not result in any diminution of the benefits given to these people from the Department of Social Protection at present?

I can give an assurance the reduction in the payment to RTE will not result in any diminution to people with the free television licence. It is intended-----

Intended is one thing.

-----to move to a household charge for television purposes and people with a free television licence will continue to have a free payment of the new charge. There is absolutely no diminution in this.

With regard to what the Government has done in the social protection budget, the Government has done €1.7 billion less than what Fianna Fáil undertook to do when it was in government. The figures are in its four-year plan.

Is this the Tánaiste's defence? Is this the best the Tánaiste can do?

Not only are the figures in the four-year plan but the way in which it proposed to achieve them is in the four-year plan, and it proposed to achieve them by cutting rates-----

The people are not interested in this. They are interested in what the Government is doing. The Government is in charge.

-----and this includes, I presume, the cutting of old age pensions and other payments. We have now produced a budget which gets us out of the bailout without cutting basic social welfare payments.

Tell that to a 23 or a 24 year old.

No young person who is currently on the reduced rate of payment will have this payment reduced. They will continue to be on the payment they are on. The change we have made to unemployment payments to young people must be seen in the context of what we are doing about the activation of young people into employment and into education and training.

I am sorry but the Government is not doing nearly enough.

It is cutting post-leaving certificate, PLC, courses, increasing the pupil-teacher ratio for PLC courses and making it hard to go to third level.

It is the Government's view the place for young people is at work, in work experience or in education and training. This is the best way for them to get out of unemployment.

The Government has increased registration fees for third level and is putting blocks in the way.

Let me be clear we do not believe any young person should find himself or herself in a situation that he or she goes onto an unemployment payment at the age of 18 and are still on it at the age of 25.

Deputy O'Dea should have his homework done the next time.

Budget 2014 is deeply dishonest. It is littered with broken promises. The programme for Government promised not to cut social welfare rates. The Labour Party claims protecting social welfare is one of its main achievements and is one of its main reasons for being in government. This week this promise has been broken again. Hiding behind the deplorable record of Fianna Fáil really is no defence. The jobseeker's allowance payment for young people has been cut, as has invalidity pension. These are core social welfare payments and they have been cut so the Government has broken its promise. When Fianna Fáil first cut jobseeker's payments for those aged under 25 in 2009 the response of the Labour Party was to state the cut was offensive and intended to promote emigration, and the party, justifiably at the time, accused Fianna Fáil of putting the squeeze on young people and making them pay for the recession. My, how its tune has changed. This morning the Tánaiste's colleague, Deputy Eamonn Maloney, as quoted in today's newspapers, justified these cuts. He wishes to save the young people of Tallaght from watching flat screen televisions seven days a week. The Tánaiste's party colleague blames young people for their unemployment.

Shame.

He accuses them, stating quite openly in his view the young people in Tallaght are too lazy to go out and work. Is it now official Labour Party policy to force young people to emigrate? Is it now official Labour Party policy to make young people pay for the recession? Is it official Labour Party policy to blame young people for being unemployed?

The disappeared come to mind.

It is official Labour Party policy to get young people into jobs and into education and training so they are in a better position to take up employment opportunities. This is official Labour Party policy and it is the policy of the Government.

Tell Labour Youth so.

This is why in the budget we have provided an additional €500 million for employment creation measures. This is why we propose to employ additional teachers in our classrooms, and additional gardaí will be recruited for the first time in many years.

When?

It is why we have provided €740 million in the budget for further education and training-----

It has been cut.

Third level has been cut by €25 million.

-----so young people can get the education and training to equip them to get into the workplace.

The place for any young person is not permanently in front of a flat screen television. It is at work or in education and training. This is where they get the best start in life.

In Canada.

The Government does not blame young people for being unemployed. It wants to help young people to get out of unemployment and into employment.

Hear, hear.

Every study and examination shows one has a better chance of getting a job-----

By cutting social welfare?

-----the higher the level of skills and level of education one has. This is why we have ensured in the budget the school system and the pupil-teacher ratio are protected, so young people get the best possible opportunity while they are still at school, and it is why we have put a focus on activation and using the education and training system to get people into a position where they are in employment. It is jobs we want for young people-----

We have 3,000 jobs a month.

We want good, well-paid jobs for which they have appropriate education and training. This is why we have made, and are making, the changes in our social welfare system, our education and training system and the jobs action plan, so we have a joined-up approach to getting people into employment and providing education and training for them.

To get young people into work one must create real decent jobs.

We do. We create 3,000 a month.

Cutting the safety net for young people and whipping the rug from under them does not get them back into employment. I beg to differ with Deputy Maloney and the Tánaiste. I do not believe young jobless people-----

This is for questions.

-----spend hours in front of flat screen televisions in Tallaght or anywhere else. The Tánaiste spoke about activation measures. A total of 54,000 young people are officially out of work, which is 18,000 more than when the Government took office. The official youth unemployment rate is 30% and many are not captured in this figure.

A question please.

It is £65 a week in the North.

Budget 2014 promises a paltry 4,500 additional places for these young people. Last year the Government promised a paltry 10,000 places and only delivered 5,000. This is the record in terms of activation for the young, so the Tánaiste should not come in here and spoof.

I would like to hear Deputy's supplementary question.

When Fianna Fáil cut jobseeker's allowance in 2009 it also claimed it would have training interventions but they did not materialise. The Labour Party was quick to point it out then, but the same is true today. People need jobs and proper labour activation but the Government is asleep at the wheel. It is failing our young people, and cutting their welfare, the only modest support for them and their families, will leave many with no option but to emigrate. This is official Labour Party policy.

I ask the Deputy to put her question.

Why is the Government forcing our young from this State to Sydney, Brisbane, Boston and beyond? It strikes me this is official Labour Party policy just like Fianna Fáil's before it. I ask the Tánaiste to answer this. Why is the Government making young people pay for the recession?

They would have a witness protection scheme with Sinn Féin.

First, let us spare a moment to take a look at Sinn Féin policy, because in 2011, after this recession began, its leader said the IMF should go home and take its money with it, and he suggested we should default.

So did the Tánaiste.

Please allow the Tánaiste to reply.

In order-----

On a point of order-----

No; take your medicine now. Take your medicine.

On a point of order-----

Will you sit down, Deputy? Sit down.

Sit down, Mattie.

Leave the medicine alone.

He tells us to take our medicine. The ones who need it are the sick ones.

What that would have resulted in is a deficit of €21 billion, and we would not have been able to borrow.

Frankfurt's way or Labour's way.

Defend the cuts. He cannot defend his cuts.

A deficit of €21 billion would have resulted in cuts in the budget of 37%.

Nonsense.

A 37% cut in the budget-----

They put €65 billion into the banks and they ask young people to-----

A 37% cut in the budget------

They have sold their principles to the highest bidder.

Would you all please stay quiet?

A 37% cut in the budget amounts to a cut of €85 a week in the old age pension. Let us cut out the spoof here.

They are the ones in government.

In regard to the issue of jobs for young people-----

Do not blame the young people and everybody else. The Tánaiste is the one who is in government.

Would you please stay quiet? Thank you.

In regard to young people, this Government is creating 3,000 additional jobs per month.

In Australia and Canada.

We want to accelerate that, which is why we have provided an additional €500 million in this year's budget - in order to get more jobs into our economy.

Think of all of those who have emigrated.

They emigrated because of you.

They are in Canada.

Second, we want to see young people in employment or in education and training. That is why we reached agreement on the youth guarantee, the idea behind which is that no young person should be more than eight months either out of the labour force or out of education and training. We have provided-----

They will be out of the country.

Tell us about jobs in Tallaght then.

We have provided the funding in this budget to enable that youth guarantee to be started and to be put into operation.

Thank you, Tánaiste.

The position of the Government in regard to young people is this: employment, or education and training.

It is emigration, emigration and emigration.

Before I call on Deputy Clare Daly, I suggest that those who are constant hecklers take the morning off some morning and go and watch television, and see what it sounds like on television when they are listening to the roaring and shouting.

A lot of people made a lot of sacrifices so we could come into this Chamber and debate, not shout each other down. Would you give the speaker a chance to ask a question and listen to the answer? You may not like the question or you may not like the answer, but that is democracy, by the way. I call Deputy Clare Daly.

To be fair to Sinn Féin, they spent a lot of time out of this House so they are making up for lost time.

What about the Tánaiste? He might go out of this himself.

Sinn Féin are all right. They are taking enough of the Queen's shillings.

Would you all please stop heckling and stay quiet? I call Deputy Clare Daly. Sinn Féin should learn to be quiet as well as everybody else.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. Any young person unfortunate enough to be watching this spectacle on a flat-screen television or a black and white portable might be somewhat shocked to see the leader of the country before us failing to answer any of the questions put to him. He talked about a €500 million investment in jobs and glossed over the fact that this is an equal sum to the amount he is slashing from the public sector wage bill.

I must admit that over the last while the Tánaiste has come in for a lot of stick about how much he has changed since he went into government. I think that is really quite unfair because I would say he has actually been very true to form. We were told a number of years ago by WikiLeaks exactly the type of operator he is, when he publicly stated he would not stand for a re-run of the Lisbon treaty referendum and then told them that was just political necessity and did something else behind the scenes. I would have to say that his skill for saying one thing and delivering the opposite has been honed into a fine art and replicated by the rest of his team in government.

The Tánaiste talks up the fact the Government has given GP cards to under-fives, but glosses over the fact that it has taken three times that amount off the medical card budget. He boasts about €14 million for a youth guarantee and says nothing about the €32 million the Government is axing from social welfare payments to young people. The Government announced yesterday a pyrite remediation scheme of €10 million as if it were a great leap forward, when it announced the same scheme this time last year - although it was then €50 million - as a first step in dealing with the tens of thousands of houses in that category. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, had the neck to tell us here on Tuesday that past budgets during this Government's term have been progressive. He told us that nobody is ideologically attached to austerity. If they are not ideologically attached to austerity, what is it, then? A coincidence? In fact, the Government has taken more money out of this economy than was even demanded by the troika.

Thank you, Deputy.

It is an ideological question. It is political treachery but it is also not even original. My question to the Tánaiste is whether he got his idea from David Cameron and the Tories, because David Cameron announced his plan for young people a couple of weeks ago. He wants to remove those under 25 from entitlement to jobseeker's and housing benefit because they should be earning or learning.

Thank you, Deputy.

That is the Tánaiste's rhetoric. My questions to the Tánaiste are as follows. His Government has stood over a revolution in social policy, overturning the benefits fought for by the trade union movement.

The Deputy is over time.

That trade union movement yesterday challenged the Tánaiste to produce the figures and the research that backs up the waffle he has been giving the Chamber this morning.

Deputy, you are over time. Will you please adhere to what the Chair says? Thank you.

It asked him to provide the research that shows that cutting young people's benefits will create jobs and not lead to poverty.

Answer that.

I am true to form.

WikiLeaks.

I am here in this House quite a long time. I make no apology for engaging with any Member of this House, as I have done over the years-----

Not with the Labour Party, though. He was separate then.

-----in robust debate, but I have never stooped to making an attack on anybody's character. Deputy Daly should not invite me to reciprocate.

The Tánaiste does it regularly.

That is as low as a snake's belly.

If you do not mind, can we hear an answer?

He is misleading the Dáil.

Deputy Daly asked me where we got the idea for our approach to youth unemployment.

The Tories.

We have developed over a period of time the idea of a youth guarantee. The level of youth unemployment in this country and in a number of other European countries is too high and we want to get it down. We will get it down by creating employment, by providing work experience opportunities and by providing the education and training that equips young people to get into employment. We reached agreement on a youth guarantee under the chairmanship of my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, at the European Social Affairs Council last February. In the course of negotiating the European budget last summer, we reached agreement on the provision of €6 billion initially, and it ended up being about €8 billion in funding for that initiative. We front-loaded that initiative to 2014 and 2015 and, in this budget, we are making provision for matching funding for that youth guarantee so we can provide employment opportunities for young people.

It is €14 million out of €6 billion.

The approach we are taking in the budget is, first, to provide additional funding for measures that will increase and accelerate, we hope, the rate of job creation in the country, which will provide employment opportunities for young people. Second, it is to ensure there is sufficient funding for the education and training sector so there will be opportunities for young people to get education and training to equip them for the jobs of today and the jobs of the future, and to provide additional funding so the youth guarantee programme can proceed. Our objective is to ensure the young people of this country get the opportunity of work, which is what they need, and that they are equipped with the education and training which will provide them with the skills to take up those employment opportunities. For the life of me I cannot see why Deputy Daly is against that approach.

The only guarantee for young people is if there is a job at the end of it. As the Tánaiste has not answered the question and has demonstrated that he has done no research on this-----

I did answer the question.

I am using the Tánaiste's answer. He talks about additional funding. In his answer to Deputy McDonald, he lauded the fact the Government is, for example, recruiting extra gardaí. However, he glosses over the fact that the changes to the pension scheme are going to result in about 1,000 gardaí walking out of their jobs, so the net result will, in fact, not be any extra job creation.

The Government is taking €500 million from the public sector wage bill, the same figure that it is miraculously using to invest in job creation. One can do the sums. It is not just me who is saying this because others have conducted research on it. These are people who gave the Tánaiste a livelihood in the trade union movement when he did not work here and whose subscriptions helped to get him elected to the House. Yesterday the Irish Congress of Trade Unions stated the Government's policies, which it had researched, would result in the loss of 30,000 jobs. That is the Tánaiste's budget. His colleague and fellow party member, Mr. Michael Taft, has said the allowances and incentives introduced rely on the private market and that there is no guarantee that the targets will be met or that the activity would not have happened anyway. For the benefit of the young people who might be listening to these proceedings, will the Tánaiste say where the jobs for them are? The only conclusion they can draw is that they will be poorer and driven out of the country as a result of the Tánaiste's policies.

I can show where the jobs are. We are creating 3,000 additional jobs a month. The Deputy can look at the list of job announcements made every month by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland to see the additional jobs being created. We have made provision in the budget to accelerate the number of the jobs that will be created. Many of the measures are targeted at the construction sector, in which there has been a very high level of unemployment. The number on the live register is declining significantly for the first time in a number of years. It is about creating jobs.

Today I am glad to see that agreement has been reached on the budget in the United States. Sensible people on both sides of the aisle in the United States House of Representatives got together and agreed a budget. Agreement on a budget had been held up for weeks by the extreme ideological voices of the Tea Party. The more I hear Deputy Clare Daly rail and shout against problems rather than provide solutions, the more I come to the conclusion that she is the Irish equivalent of the Tea Party.